Upon My Back
by PenchantPal
Summary: A single anonymous call has massive repercussions when Armsmaster is called to Winslow High on the day of Taylor's trigger event.
1. Armsmaster

**[1] Armsmaster**

They had called him in on an anonymous tip.

The caller, a young girl by the sound of it, had said that something had happened at Winslow High. Some type of disturbance, and she was afraid to do anything about it for apparent fear of retaliation.

It wasn't as surprising as Armsmaster would have liked. Winslow High was the most gang-ridden school in all of Brockton Bay. Fights broke out there on a weekly basis, and inevitably the Protectorate would get called to handle it.

Normally, they _wouldn't_, of course. That was what the normal police were for, if it did escalate to the point that such attention was warranted. Otherwise, it was left to the school to handle its students. But Piggot had told him that he needed a boost of PR, that he was starting to be known as too standoffish, and that a trip to a school would show that he was approachable and cared about the youth of Brockton Bay.

Armsmaster thought the whole thing was ridiculous. He could think of a thousand better ways to spend his time than to make a show of him visiting a school. He had said to just have Shadow Stalker handle it, being in the prime position to do so, but Piggot was dead-set on _him_ going, and what she said, went.

Wasteful. Just one more thing he could do nothing about.

Still, he took some satisfaction in the looks on the students' faces as they turned and gawked at him striding through the halls of their school. His heavy blue powersuit and halberd cut him an imposing image – though not _too_ imposing, as the PR department had made sure – and they deserved to be gawked at and appreciated. He had poured months into both of them, making them as good as they could be, and still he had so many more ideas for how to improve on what he had built.

It felt good, seeing these children appreciate that. He was the hero here, and they were in awe of him.

Most of them.

It took him a moment to catch it. A hesitance in some of the students as they hid from his gaze, scurrying out of the way.

He slowed his pace, taking more time to examine them.

Now that he was looking for it, he could see many of the students appeared nervous about his presence, some even scared. There was the occasional anger or scorn, gang members or hopefuls most likely, but the overwhelming mood was apprehension.

He stopped, and the students froze around him.

He slowly turned his head to one girl. She was on the shorter side, with her brown hair held up by two blue pins. She, above all the others, looked terrified of him.

"You," he said, watching as all the color drained out of her face. "I received a report of a disturbance at this school. Do you know anything about that?"

Her mouth dropped open, then clamped back shut. She shook her head rapidly.

If Armsmaster had thought the other students were nervous before, that was nothing compared to how they were sweating bullets then. Few of them could still meet his eyes.

He adjusted the grip on his halberd. "I'll ask again," he said, raising his voice to be heard by the entire hall. "If anyone has heard of a disturbance at this school, come forward now."

Again, silence.

No one wanted to speak out. No one wanted to do anything, to be the one to act. 'Dissolution of responsibility.' It was a concept he was intimately familiar with, had been for years before he became a hero. He was used to seeing crowds standing around, brushing past one another with eyes averted while people were being robbed or attacked just across the street.

Fine. If no one was going to stand up, he would handle it by himself. He was used to shouldering the burden of responsibility alone.

He began moving again, briskly pressing through the halls, the steady thud of the end of his halberd on the linoleum floors echoing. Students practically leapt out of his way now, all moving aside for him, but none speaking.

One suddenly appeared, rushing in front of him at an intersection in the halls. He recognized her.

Sophia Hess. Shadow Stalker.

"Can I help?" she asked.

He narrowed his eyes. Shadow Stalker was in her civilian clothes, but she was still trying to assist? Why? Driven by the same need to act? He wouldn't expect it from her, but maybe.

Or something else? Trying to prove herself?

A darker possibility existed. That she was in on the disturbance, whatever it was.

"I've received reports of a disturbance in this school," Armsmaster repeated again. He looked around and saw the other students all staring at Sophia, mouths agape, but she kept her eyes locked on to him.

"Oh, yeah," Sophia said easily, brushing aside a strand of her dark hair that had stuck to her forehead. Sweaty. "There was a fight a little while back."

_PARTIAL TRUTH._

Armsmaster's eyes slowly lowered from the indicator, back to Sophia's casual expression. "A fight?" he asked.

"Yeah. A couple of guys going at it. Got pretty big."

_TRUTH._

Armsmaster frowned. "And you believe that was the cause of the report?"

She shrugged, a motion his lie detector couldn't read. He wondered if she knew that. "Sorry for the wasted trip."

His eyes slowly went over the sweat on her forehead, the tension in her muscles. She was panting slightly. "Were you running?"

He saw it then. The slightest twitch in her eye. "Yeah."

"Why?"

Her eyes narrowed at him, but Armsmaster was more focused on the growing tension in her muscles, her jaw. "I run track."

_PARTIAL TRUTH._

"And that's why you were running just now?"

She looked him in the eyes.

She said nothing.

Armsmaster's voice was a low growl, quiet enough that the other students wouldn't be able to hear. "Miss Hess, you will tell me what happened right—"

_A solar system, eight planets revolving around its star. The third planet is the only one of them capable of life. Not yet, not with the planet in its infancy, but eventually._

_Trajectory?_

Armsmaster caught himself mid-stumble, the end of his halberd sliding along the floor. Warnings filled his helmet, flashing into his eyes.

In front of him, Sophia had fallen to the ground. She was shaking her head, eyes wide but unfocused.

_What was that?_ Armsmaster thought, reaching out for the memories that had already begun to fade. They were familiar to him somehow, but he couldn't grasp, couldn't hold them—

_Agreement._

_The entities move as one, as they have for so long. A pair, incapable of being separated at this point. Each carries too many vital functions to allow the other to continue without them._

Armsmaster was on his back when he came to. Again. Another of those…

What? What had happened?

Armsmaster pushed himself to his feet. Around them, students were staring at him and Sophia. He couldn't be bothered to pay them any mind, not when he was beginning to understand.

It wasn't a well-known phenomenon, but Armsmaster had heard of it once or twice. A sudden flash of disorientation in certain conditions, exceedingly difficult to test and never able to be recalled by the parahumans in question afterward, but happening with too much certainty to be able to be dismissed by parahuman researchers.

A parahuman had just triggered.

Armsmaster didn't waste any more time. He pushed forward, past Sophia as she struggled to her feet, and ran through the halls of the school, searching for the cause, the child who had just triggered.

He remembered his own trigger event. He would never forget it for as long as he lived, the final catalyzation of years of frustration boiling over and overwhelming him. He had heard stories from others too, Hannah standing out among them. Armsmaster knew what a trigger event meant to a person. It meant collapse. It meant a moment of their self breaking down completely.

He wouldn't let someone else go through that. Not alone. He wouldn't just stand by.

The screams hit him first. Then the stench. Emanating from down one hallway, from a single locker, with trash and bugs swarming around the bottom of it. More bugs were arriving every second, skittering down the halls alongside him.

He hefted his halberd back, and struck the lock.

A mountain of mush, bloody and horrid, poured out of the locker as it flew open, so vile it almost made him step back. But he didn't.

He didn't, because there was a girl inside the locker; tall, no older than sixteen, with her long dark hair covered in blood with the rest of her body. She was screaming hysterically, sobbing as she burst out of the bloody mess that came up to her knees.

She fell into his waiting arms.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: I want to give a fair warning and say updates will be slow outside of the Summer, so don't be surprised if there is a month or two gap between new chapters being posted.<p> 


	2. Assault

**[2] Assault**

"Yeah, no, I get it," Assault said into the phone, propped against his shoulder while he wrote. "You can't be sure. It's helpful anyway, trust me. Thanks for your time. Bye."

He hung up the phone, then heaved a sigh. Two words and a name stared at him from the piece of paper he had been writing on, the end-result of a day of harried research while everything went to hell around him.

Now he just had to decide what to do with it.

He shook his head and returned to one of the binders he had already gone through, digging it out from the piles that covered his desk. Each of them were filled with pages upon pages of reports and notes, all on various different people he had investigated at one time or another. Placed closest in front of him were files on his most recent case; behavioral analyses, reports from therapists, statements from the Wards, a record of prior offenses confirmed and suspected…

It was a surprisingly small amount of info compared to what he usually had to work with. It had been a challenge, in a way, reminding him of the old days when he was based out of a garage and had to gather up every piece of data all by himself, no huge base of knowledge to work off of. Nostalgic in any other situation, but he couldn't find it in him to dwell on that, not with the reasons behind his research tonight. He stayed focused, one hand flipping through pages in front of him while the other scribbled down more notes in the already filled pad at his side. He definitely didn't want to miss anything, not here.

A rumble of thunder made his pencil pause. It was a storm around the PHQ, sheets of rain and lightning alike crashing down from the sky. Some of the bolts impacted the forcefield around the base, sending out a web out of bright streaks through the air, splaying across the barely visible barrier. He thought it was pretty fitting, considering the shitstorm the day had devolved into. And it was supposed to have been date night...

Another sound caught his attention, this one just outside: a clank of metal mixed with heavy footfalls, coming up to the door of his office. Assault didn't wait for the knock. "Door's open, Daunt," he called.

There was a pause before the door whooshed open and Dauntless stepped in. "How do you do that?" he asked in his quiet voice.

"A gentleman never tells," Assault quipped absently, flipping to the next page of his report. Honestly, it was easy; Armsmaster was the only other person at Brockton Bay PHQ with footsteps that heavy, but it was easy to tell them apart if one just paid a little attention to the _way_ they each walked. Armsy's steps were sure and deliberate, making out a path where Dauntless's were slow and hesitant, careful not to disturb.

There was also the whole thing with Armsmaster not having left the hospital since his PR visit to Winslow High had somehow spiralled into this catastrophe, so it was easier to figure out than Assault cared to admit.

Dauntless huffed in a poor imitation of a laugh as he navigated through the towers of files that filled Assault's office, the metal of his armor rustling and clicking with his movements. The whole getup was based on Greco-Roman centurions, gold and filled with more glowy parahuman magic bullshit with every day that went by. It was heavy-duty and more than a little encumbering, but it carried Daunt's whole power with it. The PRT folks wanted to call him a Tinker for it, but Armsmaster had shot that down.

Assault counted his lucky stars that his own power meant he could grace the world with just his skintight suit instead of having to cart around all that crap with him wherever he went. That appreciation went double for Puppy's costume, which he owed dearly for making so many patrols so much easier on the eyes. Dauntless, on the other hand, had to drag all his equipment with him wherever he went; otherwise, he was as good as dead weight.

The guy tried, bless his soul, tried harder than anyone in Brockton Bay barring their 'free-time is free-to-work-time' loon of a leader, but he just didn't have the instincts for their line of work, or the athleticism, or... well, anything. Assault often found himself wondering how the guy had even survived long enough as a cop to trigger.

Still, Dauntless had a good heart, and let it not be said that he was a man unaware of his faults, always trying to help out the others to make up for his lack of any expertise. Honestly, he reminded Assault of Puppy sometimes, and as horrible as that was when it came into his more private fantasies, he had yet to shake the impression.

"More research?" Dauntless asked, settling down into a chair off to the side of the room.

"Oh, you know me," he said. It was a sting to his rep that someone as charming and altogether amazing as himself was known so well for having his nose shoved in files, but habits from his days of jailbreaking had died hard. A man had to be meticulous in that line of work, especially one who actually gave a damn about what kind of people he was breaking out.

Dauntless quietly leaned back in his seat, one hand gripped loosely around the shaft of his arclance, now resting against his shoulder, while the other held his shield in his lap. The man kept those things closer than Halbeard did his namesake. The halberd part of it, not the beard. Great, now Assault's mind was stuck on the idea of Armsy forgetting his beard and leaving it laying around random places for Assault to stumble on.

"Are you alright?" Dauntless asked at the shudder that ran through Assault's body.

"Me? Pssh. Dandy as a daisy." He jotted down another note in the tiny margin remaining before flipping to the next page. "You?"

"I'm fine," Dauntless said plainly. His typical response.

Assault nodded, waiting. Just had to give Daunt a minute and he would bring up what was bothering him. Until then, Assault continued through the files, setting one aside and picking up another.

After two minutes of solid silence, Dauntless sighed. "It's just," he began, "I wonder how something like this happens. It's a disaster."

"It is," Assault agreed easily, not taking his eyes off the pages. Dauntless wasn't the type to mind.

"I should have done something," Dauntless said after another moment of silence. He rolled his arclance back and forth between his fingers, white electricity sparking along the blade. "I knew that she – Shadow Stalker, I mean – I knew that Shadow Stalker had issues. I should have tried to sit her down and talk to her."

"We all knew. Not sure how it's your responsibility." Not that Assault had expected anything else from him. The guy tended to blame himself for everything.

"Well, I'm the one with the most spare time. I just sit around doing nothing while you guys do real work. I should have… I don't know, said something. Now look at what happened."

Like it was possible to miss. Hess was all everyone was talking about around the PHQ, as well as the PRT headquarters, judging by the number of calls they had been receiving from them. A Ward caught causing somebody to trigger, and as the result of having been bullying the poor girl for all of high school? Heads were rolling, and Armsmaster was out for blood more than Assault had ever seen him. Apparently he had been there for the trigger, seen it firsthand, and now he wanted Hess drawn and quartered for it. Not that Assault disagreed, but it was definitely a change of pace to see such a reaction from Armsy. Maybe he was blaming himself as well, being that he was technically supposed to be in charge of the Wards.

Assault didn't blame either of them. The logistics made it almost impossible for Armsmaster to look after the Wards after the Director had had them all restationed from the PHQ to the PRT headquarters, and Dauntless had more pressure on him, put more pressure on himself than anyone else. He was always pushing himself, training and trying to get better no matter how little impact it ended up having.

But if he was being honest, Assault blamed himself just like they did. He wondered if having a savior complex just came hand-in-hand with being a hero.

"Someone should have done something," Assault said. "You're right. But that's not on just you. That's on all of us, Miss Piggy in particular. She put _herself_ in charge of the Wards. She made it her job to handle them, and then she didn't. Her fault."

Dauntless just shook his head. "She has other duties too. I mean, it can't be easy being the PRT director for Brockton Bay of all places."

"Then she shouldn't have taken control of the Wards. She should've known her own limits and not try and stretch herself thinner." He grinned. "Not that she couldn't stand a little thinning."

Dauntless frowned at the last comment, but thankfully appeared to get the hint, falling quiet. Assault doubted the message would stick, but the guy hopefully wouldn't blame himself for this mess too.

Assault went back to flipping through files, the scratching of his pencil taking notes soon the only sound filling the room beside the occasional distant roar of thunder.

It was a while before Dauntless spoke again. "So who is your research on this time?"

"Our very own little miss psycho, actually."

"Shadow Stalker?" Dauntless asked unnecessarily, a frown in his voice. "Why are you doing that? I thought the police was handling the investigation."

"PRT, actually. Piggot got the whole thing put under their jurisdiction, using Armsmaster being the responder as her excuse." Mainly, it was a last-ditch effort to cover-up Shadow Stalker's identity and Hebert's triggering. Have the police handle the other bullies connected to the thing, and people would wonder why the PRT was handling those two specifically. Already, the students had to suspect; there was bound to be one cape geek or another who had been there and could put the pieces together, but so far the stigma against revealing a cape's identity was keeping them quiet.

Assault didn't expect it to last forever, though. Someone would say something eventually, and then more people would spread it, and enough villains or organizations would get their hands on the info to keep it in reserve or for sale even if the PRT managed to get every single mention of it removed from the internet. At best, it would be kept to an open secret, where the information was out there for anyone who thought to look, but nobody would risk breaking the unwritten rules and actually using it.

That was what Assault hoped, anyway. In the most racist city on the east coast, he couldn't be sure of anything. He wasn't about to trust punks from the ABB or E88 to stick to the unwritten rules; if just one of them found out that Hess was Shadow Stalker and decided to take matters into their own hands…

A quiet voice broke him out of his thoughts. "Assault?"

Assault blinked and shook his head. "Sorry?"

"You're fine; it's nothing," Dauntless said. "I was just saying that… Well, if the PRT is handling the investigation, then why are you looking into her?"

"Oh." Assault shrugged his shoulders, flipping to another page. "She hasn't been talking, so they called me up to do my own interrogation with her tonight. Soon, actually." An appointment that worked out surprisingly well for him, as much as it could. All his days as Brockton Bay's premiere interrogator had paid off this once, at least. "Figured I'd do a little digging of my own before I go."

Dauntless slowly roved his eyes over the stacks of files covering Assault's desk. "Just a little digging?"

"Please. This is like if Armsy was only up until four working on his wife— sorry, I mean his halberd. Hell, I'm almost ashamed of myself."

Dauntless snorted, but it was a muted sound. He never had been one to laugh at others. They all looked pretty good in comparison to himself, or so he had told Assault over a few beers once.

Helpfully, that served as a reminder not to bring him with when Assault went out to get plastered tonight. He didn't imagine himself being in the mood to pat a crying co-worker on the back this time. Hell, maybe mister Halbeard himself would be up for it for once. If ever they would both be needing it...

Assault sighed, leaning back and throwing the file on to his desk. The whole thing was just so damn heavy. It wasn't his style.

Assault wasn't a man who cared much for drama. He liked to look on the bright side of things, living life in the moment, bouncing from day to day. He liked to have _fun_, see what life had to offer. If he saw an opportunity, he took it with glee. Probably that was what had ended up with him in the Protectorate, taking the slim window he saw and diving straight for it, but hey, that had worked out pretty damn well, thank you very much. He also credited the approach to him now being a married man.

Probably it had also resulted in him becoming a jailbreak artist and getting arrested in the first place, but they couldn't all be winners.

Of course, as his dear wife liked to say, his 'living life in the moment' philosophy was just a symptom of not thinking ahead. She said he went off half-cocked, throwing himself headfirst into random shit without any idea or consideration of the consequences, just because he wanted to see how it would go. The first time she had brought that up, he had countered that such was probably why she had a ring on her finger, which had earned him a sock to the gut. The second time, he had claimed that she obviously hated their new puppy, because otherwise they wouldn't have her; that had earned him a slap upside the head. The third time… Well, one gets the idea. Ah, domestic bliss.

All-in-all, she probably was right, but he would adamantly refuse to admit that for as long as it put that adorable glare on her face.

The truth was that he had just spent far too long dredging through serious shit to want to dip a toe back in there. He had spent too long wondering what the future might hold up, no way was he doing that again. His trigger had freed him from all that, thrown it on its head and given him a golden opportunity to leave everything behind and do whatever the fuck he wanted. Break someone out of jail for a couple bucks? Sure, why not?

...Looking at it like that, maybe a dose of reality was good for him. He couldn't avoid it all the time. As much as he liked to let everything slide off his back with a grin and a joke, there were some things that brought him back down to that familiar crapsack of a world he thought he had left behind. Some things deserved that much from him.

Didn't mean he couldn't be pissed as all hell at Sophia Hess for being the one to drag him down.

"I better start heading out soon," he announced, rising from his chair. Dauntless looked disappointed. No doubt he had been hoping to be some help with everyone else was running around like chickens with their heads cut off. "Hey, I've got some personal files on Purity somewhere in this mess, and I want to take a look at them later, put in some updates about her so-called new leaf. Do me a favor and round 'em up for me?"

Let it never be said that Assault was an ungracious man.

The ferry from the PHQ bucked up and down as it pushed through crest after crest on its way to the shore, Assault stuffed up inside the cabin. Dark clouds had rolled over the bay, blanketing the city in dense rain and shrouding what little glow the moon gave. Flashes of lightning were all that could be relied on to illuminate the violent waters outside. Then, when it docked, it was just a short walk to the vans waiting to take him to the PRT headquarters.

The streets were quiet, most people having gone indoors to avoid the storm. There was only the occasional cluster of people, huddled together as they walked down the wet streets or holed up in the alleys covered in shadow. Most of the groups were on the younger side, at least going by the ones he managed to glimpse through a flash of lightning or the dull glow of a streetlamp. It said bitter things about Brockton Bay that Assault assumed most of them were members of one gang or another.

This was the kind of place that allowed someone like Shadow Stalker in their ranks; a place that had gangs and fighting on every corner, where that was the only option for most kids. You had to be careful navigating the streets, learning the good ones and the bad, when to avoid certain parts of the city.

It was the kind of place that needed every hand on deck. Assault didn't know if other cities even had their Wards patrolling, but he did bet that none of them had their Wards patrol as often. Was it a microcosm of the whole place that they had to have kids out on the streets to defend the rest of them, where the ones who should have been protected were out there doing the protecting themselves?

So much for providing a safe and stable environment. Then again, it was Brockton Bay. That was going to apply no matter what they were doing in this shithole, so long as it wasn't _getting out_. There was an air here, a kind of mood or feel to the place. Dangerous, everything filled with _tension_. Teetering on the razor's edge, the city and everyone in it.

Inside the PRT headquarters, it wasn't any different. It was the center of law enforcement in a city with this many parahumans, and it had to play the same delicate balancing act as everyone else, _for_ everyone else. Trying to push the gangs back without pushing _too_ far. There were limits to what could be done when you had a motherfucking _dragon_ as one of your gang lords and you desperately didn't want to poke it and risk waking it up. But that also meant you couldn't poke any of the dragon's rivals either. Push them out of the way and the dragon would graciously take up whatever space you freed, making it more territory you couldn't dare touch.

Sometimes Assault was glad for the division between the PRT and Protectorate, if only because it meant that he had nothing to do with those decisions. He was fine being a grunt instead of a general. He didn't want to be in charge of people's lives like that, kids' lives.

_And yet you're here,_ a traitorous voice in the back of his head muttered as the elevator took him down to the interrogation rooms.

He navigated through the halls of reinforced steel with the ease of someone dearly familiar with the route. He nodded to a few of the PRT guards he passed, friends from his many trips down there, but he didn't stop to chat. He silently made his way to a familiar door made of heavy iron, marked 'INTERROGATION.'

Assault blew out a breath, then opened the door.

It was a small room, plain, with gray concrete everything and a small security camera pacing back and forth in the upper corner of the room. The only thing of note was a wide mirror that covered a wall; a one-way window. No one was supposed to be behind there at the moment, but Assault wasn't about to put faith in that.

In the center of the room rested an aluminum table, with a chair on either side. One was empty. In the other, a scowling black girl glared at him.

"Shadow Stalker," he greeted.

She was still dressed in her civilian clothes, faded jeans and a green tank-top. The casual clothing contrasted with the large, electric handcuffs firmly wrapped around her wrists and ankles, with another pair locking the pair on her wrists to a bar on the table. A charge was running through each of them to prevent her from shifting, Assault knew.

A power play, all of it. Posturing even to put her in this interrogation cell instead of one of the more normal ones. If he had to guess, he'd attribute it to Piggot wanting her to know just how fucked she was for breaking her parole this blatantly, disrespecting the terms this much. Assault couldn't find it in himself to have too much sympathy. Let 'em be dicks about it. She deserved it.

She didn't say anything as he closed the door behind him and walked into the room. Her steely gaze only bored into him, cold and hostile. He remembered the first time he had met her, and those eyes had stood out to him then as well. There was something animalistic in them, feral, and try as she might to disguise it, there was still an edge there if one knew what to look for.

Other people didn't always see it. Assault knew that she had been one of the queen bees of her school despite her history of fights, and even now there were some people asking for leniency just because she was a pretty face. It reminded him of the zoo he used to go to when he was a kid, and the panther they had kept there. Everybody would 'ooh' and 'aww' at the thing, too busy marveling at the beauty of the trapped beast to realize it wanted nothing more than to get out and eat them alive.

Assault had always been the little shit who liked to throw stuff at the panther when nobody else was around. He had liked to point and laugh at it, trapped in its ten-by-ten cage filled with dirt, and say, 'see, you're more miserable than me.'

Old habits died hard.

He grinned and dropped down into the free chair, propping his feet up on the table. "So you're in deep shit," he said conversationally.

She was quiet, as he had expected. He didn't mind.

"I bet I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking, 'this is bullshit. I'm only in this much trouble 'cause Armsy caught me red-handed.'" Her eyes narrowed momentarily, enough to let him know he hit the mark. He grinned wider. "Yeah, funny and sad as shit, but it's true. You might have even gotten away with it if he hadn't been there. I've seen how bullying can go. It's fucked up how people can get away with anything. But you didn't, and now he's pissed at you, and Piggot is more than happy to throw you under the bus for him. Can't imagine that's fun."

He tilted his head, examining her. "So? Was it worth it, getting yourself in this much shit by shoving that girl into all that shit? Worth making her _trigger_?"

He let that sit for a moment. Shadow Stalker's expression had closed off again, and she wasn't looking at him anymore. She had dismissed him. He barely held back from rolling his eyes.

He knew that, by itself, the thought of causing somebody else to trigger would _at least_ unsettle anybody, especially a cape. He had nightmares himself sometimes, wondering if the trigger that Puppy refused to say a word about had anything to do with him, but he could never find the courage to ask her. Another old habit, one he hated for staying with him, but he was starting to realize that he would always hold a little of his old cowardice in his heart.

For this girl to dismiss doing that to Hebert so easily, he knew there was something deeper than Hess just disliking her.

"I mean, really. _Taylor Hebert?_" he asked, drawing out the name. "Why would you go after somebody like that? Poor little girl with a dead mom, a dad who's struggling, no friends… Come on, Sophia. Shame on you. Putting that girl through more pain… Why, she's been through so much that she's even touched _Armsy's_ heart of stone."

Here, she couldn't hold it back anymore. She let out a loud scoff and shook her head. He caught a hint of her muttering something under her breath.

"What was that, Stalker?" he asked. "Come on, share with the class."

She turned her eyes back to him, and he could see they were filled with scorn. At him or Hebert, he couldn't be sure.

"She is _pathetic_," she repeated, each syllable carefully enunciated. "I should have known you all would take her side. 'Oh, poor Hebert, she's had such a rough time.'" She snorted. "So what if I did it? She never would've done anything about it. She would have just taken it, go crying in the bathroom for an hour, and then stand around and let us do whatever we want the next day."

Assault had to fight to keep the disgust off his face. This girl just didn't have a shred of empathy in her about this. He would've called her a born psychopath if he hadn't known that for a fact to be wrong.

He reminded himself why he was here, what he had to do.

"Jeez. Sounds like you really hate the girl."

Sophia only shrugged, leaning back in her chair as much as she could while hooked to the table. "I don't hate her. She's too far below me to be worth hating. She's nothing. She just takes whatever we throw at her, day-in and day-out. Whining and complaining and moping around, but never _doing_ anything. If she wanted it to stop so bad, _she_ should've done something, stood up for herself for once in her worthless life. She's a worm, a parasite just waiting for someone else to fix her problems. And now she has it. She's got you and the PRT and even fucking Armsmaster all falling all over themselves to take care of poor little Hebert, and _I'm_ the bad guy. I forget when people starting getting up in arms about stepping on ants."

"Oh, I don't know," Assault said. "Seems like a while that they've had problems with shining a magnifying glass on 'em."

Sophia's eyes rose up to meet his. The familiar glint to her gaze was gone. Instead, the wildness _filled_ her stare, making her look almost feral, like she'd jump across the table and rip his throat out with her bare teeth. All she needed was the slightest provocation...

Her voice was a smug hiss, words bred from complete conviction. "She _deserved_ it."

...And boy, was she gonna get it.

"That what Steven said about you?"

It was amazing how a person's mood could do a complete turn-around in an instant. From smug and superior to their entire body locking up at once, every muscle tensed, the confidence in their eyes flashing to shock for the briefest moment before it was all locked away behind an emotionless mask.

"Don't—"

"Don't what?" Assault cut her off. "Don't talk about him? Don't compare you to him? But Sophia, you two have so much in common now. Maybe I could get him in here so you could tell him he's all forgiven, that you understand completely now. After all, it was so much fun for you to do to Hebert, there's no way you could blame him for—"

She lunged forward, her eyes more hateful than he could ever remember seeing, but the restraints kept her anchored to her chair and the table, pulling her back with a hard clank.

Assault rose an eyebrow at her. "Guessing that's a 'no'?"

"_Fuck you,_" she growled. "You have no idea what the fuck you're talking about."

The corner of his mouth twitched in a small smile, the expression just barely tinged with pity. "Oh, but I do."

It was official PRT policy to avoid information relating to trigger events unless specifically volunteered, for risk of being insensitive to their trauma. Assault understood it, agreed with it even. He didn't want his own trigger event being brought into the open, and he imagined the same applied to most capes.

That didn't mean that it was always unnecessary to know, however. Or that it was difficult to find out, if one was just a little motivated.

It had been easy to assemble a basic idea with a little research. First he had looked at the most likely timeframe for Hess's triggering based on when her cape career started, pinning it down to around three or four years ago. Once that was established, he looked at the most obvious candidate, the family, to see what possible stresses or changes could have occurred in the span.

One event stood out: a stepfather suddenly being divorced while the wife was pregnant with his daughter.

Assault had investigated further, looking at Hess's school records. Not grades; detentions, of which there was a sudden increase starting exactly around the time of the divorce, almost immediately after a bill for a motel room on Steven's credit card. There were school hearings for violence and fights. Why? Anger at the parents for getting divorced? Frustration? That would have been his first guess, but reports indicated that she seemed _happier_ than before. It had started slowly, but she appeared to have gotten more and more confident as time went along, more involved in general.

The files on the divorce gave no reasonings for the separation, just the terms; Steven wasn't to be allowed any visitation rights, no contact of any sort. Not a restraining order, but a heavy encouragement along those lines, certainly. And yet in school, where Sophia had been quiet and sullen before, she was getting more confident, more unrepentant, and in more fights every day that went by.

She had become more outgoing. She was _happier_ after the divorce.

But that wasn't enough to go on. He had needed more.

Sophia's own therapy sessions yielded frustratingly little, the girl mostly complaining about her day to ward off any deeper questions. There was one familiar strand in all their conversations that the therapist managed to pick up: a fixation on 'strong' and 'weak.' 'Predator' and 'prey,' as Sophia had described it in one session.

There were also a few disturbing reports from the Wards. Taken together, there seemed to be a trend of her being more reluctant to intervene in crimes where the victim was passive, huddled up or trying to get away instead of fighting back. Gallant's reports had mentioned him sensing scorn from her in those occasions, though he hadn't been able to tell who it was directed towards exactly.

It was enough for Assault to make up a basic psych evaluation on Stalker and send him looking for a professional opinion on it. He had wrangled up a number for one of the PRT's child psychologists, and the woman he had got had said that whatever she came up with would only be base speculation, her having never met with Sophia personally. That was fine with Assault. He was used to making jumps in dealing with people, was good at finding the right ones _to_ make. They were spot-on more often than not.

In the end, she had told him what he had already suspected. Sophia's personality fit with that of someone who had been abused as a child. Assault's first instinct had been that Steven had beat her, but at that point he had forcibly taken a step back from his projecting and looked at the facts. Steven had no history of physical or sexual violence that Assault could find any sign of, so the psychologist and he agreed that the most likely scenario was simply the remaining one.

_Emotional abuse. Steven._

And Assault had a sudden glimpse of a window everyone else thought shut.

"But really, I just find it kinda funny," Assault said. "Guess you take more after pops than you thought, huh?"

"He is _not_ my dad," Sophia growled. "He's some fucking douchebag my mom dated. That's it."

Assault inclined his head, accepting the point. "Fair enough. Still, he left a mark, didn't he? Did you pick up tips from what he did to you when you were going after Hebert? Call him up and ask for advice? 'Hey, Steve, I was just wondering how you mentally break someone down. Yeah, I know, I thought I would've picked up a lot too, but guess I need another _lesson_—'"

"Shut up!" Sophia screamed. "You think you know everything, you fucking don't. I was never a _victim_ like Hebert. I fucking survived, got stronger, and made everyone my bitch. She couldn't even deal with some girls in fucking high school. What about everything else, the rest of her life? How is she gonna deal with that? Shut down and weep and moan and whine about how everyone is being mean to her? I gave her a les— I taught— I _showed_ her what life is about, and she couldn't fucking deal."

He nodded. "Passing it on from Steven."

"Stop saying his fucking name!"

"You know, that's one thing I wanted to ask you. Does it make you feel good knowing that Taylor might react the same way to your name once she wakes up? Make you feel all warm and fuzzy knowing you were to her what Steven was to you? I bet Terry would be ecstatic to hear that too."

Her eyes flashed to something else with the mention of her older brother – fear or apprehension, maybe panic – before it was burned away with her anger. "The locker wasn't even my fucking idea! You're just blaming me because I'm the only one the PRT can get at—"

"Actually, we've got your acquaintances too," Assault said conversationally. "But even if this idea didn't come from you specifically, you still participated in it. And don't try and tell me you never came out with a plan to torment little Hebert. Your classmates don't seem to think this bullying shit was anywhere near new."

"So then what's your big fucking plan?" Sophia snapped. Her breathing was heavy, erratic, but he could see she was trying to maintain an air of confidence, trying to keep that smug look on her face. She couldn't be looking 'weak.' "Make me feel all guilty and shit for _Hebert?_ Apologize?"

"Oh, I want you on your hands and knees begging for her to forgive you," he said with a shrug. "But I can't imagine that happening, least not right now—"

"Not fucking _ever_," she spat.

"—still, it's good to get a framework laid out." He took his feet off the table and leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. "No, I'm telling you this because I want you to understand just how fucked you are. You think Armsmaster is pissed at you? Wrong. _Everyone_ is pissed at you. Every cape in the Protectorate, everyone in the Wards, even the people from the PRT. You are _fucked._

"What do you think is going to happen now? You think anyone is on your side? No one's going to defend you when they send your ass to juvie. Three years there, how do you think it's going to be? And after you turn eighteen, what happens? You join the Protectorate until you do something like this again and get thrown in a real prison? God knows you're not gonna be any less a punk after juvie. You're not the type.

"So maybe you'll 'escape' and try to go it on your own. Except you're small-fry in the cape world, barely good enough to take on normal thugs. You can't do anything by yourself. You need a team, but no team in their right mind is gonna take you with them. You're not worth the effort, not like this. So your cape career is shot, and your civilian career is demolished from juvie and prison, and I'm willing to bet you'll have no friends or family that can put up with your shit either. You're alone, and you're empty. Because you can't forget _Steven_."

"You're wrong. I don't give a fuck about him," she growled. "I'm over it. You're the only one who's obsessed with him."

"And yet you look like a terrified little girl when you hear his name. You can't even say it."

_"Steven,"_ she spat out, but it was ragged and forced. It would almost be funny how much she was confirming everything if it wasn't just sad. "There. You happy?"

"Ecstatic. You know it's been three years since he lived with you? But you're still jumping at shadows like he's around every corner. What about when you get to juvie or prison and there are people like Steven actually watching you, following you wherever you go? You're lucky now, but you're pushing it, and you're close to running out.

"You see, Sophia, the simple fact of the matter is that the PRT no longer gives a fuck about you, not after this. They don't want to help you, they just want you out of their sight, locked up somewhere where you're not their problem. And once that happens, there's no coming back, not for you. Not from there."

He waited, watching as the full realization finally started to sink into her. The anger was still in her eyes, the resentment and bitterness and outrage, but her shoulders were slowly slumping with another emotion. Resignation.

She wasn't expecting any way out. She wasn't expecting any help.

He paused to consider. He had come into this whole thing with a plan – more an idea if he was being honest with himself – and this was his last chance to back out. Was he crazy for thinking it? Sentimental? Just throwing himself headfirst into another disaster, one that could possibly ruin the nice life he had built up after so much trouble? All for this girl?

_Someone should have done something._

He thought of his wife's fond little smile, the one she wore whenever she was trying really hard to be pissed at him but couldn't quite manage it.

Who would've thought that a dumb little shit from the Bronx could grow into someone deserving of that?

"But that's not what I want."

Her eyes snapped up to meet his.

"You're fucked up, Stalker. You've done some horrible shit, and I'm betting there's even more that I don't know of. _Steven_ fucked you up, don't deny it. And for as long as you keep on going around, not able to move on from what he did to you, you are going to be _empty_, and you are going to have nothing. He'll keep tearing you down every day, even when he's long dead and buried. You'll never feel safe, and you'll never survive, not by yourself.

"You _need_ the Protectorate if you wanna survive, but they don't want anything to do with you now. They want to throw you in the doghouse, where you'll never get better, and where you'll never get to the state where someone would ever _want_ to watch your back. They want to punish you, not to help you. But I do.

"So I'm giving you a chance. One last chance to try and learn to be a decent fucking human being again. You agree, you actually _try_, and I swear I'll move Heaven and Earth to keep you on the Protectorate and keep your life from falling into the deepest dredges you can dream of. They'll hate me for it, I'm betting, mostly because they'll have no idea why the hell I'd do anything for you. But I'm not ready to give up on you just yet."

His expression became deathly serious. "But if you screw things up, I'll be more than happy to turn around and personally throw you into those pits where you'll be chewed up and spit right back out. You're gonna be dependent on me, and it's gonna be a constant fight for me to keep them from you. If you give me a reason to stop fighting, I will, and everything I said _will_ happen.

"So what do you say?" he asked. "You wanna die, alone and afraid and having spent your life trying to convince yourself it would never happen? Or you do want to struggle and take the shit they'll rightfully fling at you, all for the chance that someone might eventually forgive you, be friends with you, _love you_, and maybe, if you're damn lucky, eventually make you able to forget Steven's face?"

She was silent, watching him with something like incredulity etched all over her face. She probably thought he was an idiot, or the most gullible and naive guy in the world. Assault couldn't say whether he disagreed.

But this was her last window, and it was closing fast.

"Fine," she gritted out. "I'll be your… fucking apprentice or whatever the hell you're talking about. I'll do what you tell me to, just… get me out of here."

He smiled.

"Smart move," he said, getting up out of his chair. "In that case, I'm already wasting time. Better get started on seeing that your life doesn't turn to shit. Boy, is that gonna be a challenge."

He headed over to the door and knocked to get the guard to open it. Turning back to Sophia, he held back a smirk. He could practically see the gears already churning in her head. He had no doubt that she thought she would just put on a show with him and then get on with whatever she wanted while his back was turned. This little shit wouldn't make things easy for him, that was for sure. In a way, he was anticipating it.

_Window's shut now,_ he mused. _No turning back for the either of us._

The door opened, and Assault cleared his throat. "Just one last thing," he said, catching her attention. "You're not my apprentice. I've got standards, and you're nowhere near close to meeting them. At least not yet."

This time, he couldn't hold it back; the corner of his mouth twisted in a lopsided smirk as he watched her trying to reign in her scowl, already getting accustomed to the role she had come up with. The dutiful, repentant little angel she was set to playing until she got out of this. Oh, this was going to be a riot.

"What am I, then?" she asked, all demure.

He laughed. "Aw, Kitty. Don't you know? You're my god damned charity case."

* * *

><p>Special thanks to BeaconHill from SpaceBattlesSufficient Velocity for being my beta reader for this chapter.


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